Nowadays, technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and so forth, for presenting a simulated environment (or a simulated world) to a user are being widely used. Typically, the user uses a specialized device (for example, such as a virtual reality device, an augmented reality device, and the like) for experiencing such a simulated environment. In use, the user generally wears (namely, supports) the specialized device on his/her head.
Nowadays, such specialized devices often employ gaze-tracking (namely, eye tracking) equipment to determine a gaze direction of the user. Typically, such gaze-tracking equipment determines a position of pupils of the user's eyes, and subsequently monitors change in the position of the pupils. Generally, in the gaze-tracking equipment, several illuminators are employed for emitting light towards the user's eyes, and a camera is employed for capturing an image depicting the user's eyes and reflections of the emitted light from the user's eyes. Thereafter, the reflections of the emitted light are used as reference for determining the position of the pupils.
However, there exist a number of limitations associated with such gaze-tracking equipment. Firstly, while using the specialized device, a portion of the user's eyes is often occluded by the user's eyelids (for example, when the user blinks or squints his/her eyes). In such an instance, some of the reflections are absent since some emitted light is not reflected by the surface of the user's eyes. Such absence of some reflections leads to inaccuracies in determining the position of the pupils of the user's eyes. Secondly, existing gaze-tracking equipment often misinterprets visual artifacts (for example, reflections of light emitted by image renderers of the specialized devices, false reflections of light from eyeglasses of the user, false reflections of light from a wet surface of the user's eyes) to be the reflections of the light emitted by the illuminators. In such a case, the gaze-tracking equipment utilizes such erroneous visual artifacts and determines an inaccurate gaze direction of the user.
Therefore, in light of the foregoing discussion, there exists a need to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks associated with conventional gaze-tracking equipment.